News Scrapbook 1980

Job Skills Will Soon Join Th;'lTb;~al Arts At uso-••K>H ... little more than conversational pieces or an interesting gardeners in zoos anyth th object to hang on the wall. "That is a shatterin mg e~can ge~. disappointing road that leads to the ditch digger with a

By MICHAEL SCO'IT-BLAIR EdveoliOft wr,t•r, Th• 5aJI Die94 UniOI'

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Two years ago, Bart Thurber sat dejectedly with 30 other postgraduate English majors at Harvard and wond red with them, "Where will lightning strike? Which of us will get a job?" .Like other liberal arts students, knowledgeable in history, language and hterature, they raced a bleak employment market Their doctoral degrees seemed

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doctorate, he said. Others go into science and business even though they prefer the humanities or social scienc- iheu- dec1s10n, said C. Joseph Pusateri, dean of the USD Colle~~. of Arts· and Sciences, is often "rooted in sheer pamc as they look at the gloomy job market before them. ever: with a few business or computer _courses - still does not make it in the business world, said Pus_ateri, a history major himself. But a history m~Jor with business knowledge that is effective and pra,ct1cal could be as valuabl_e and, in some cases, ~ven more valuable, than a chem1Stry or physics major m the modern management world. Pusa:teri_and Thurber have a solution that is being enthus1ast1cally en~orsed by many businesses and indus- try They are creatmg an Organizational Skills certifica t1on Program, . '.'It's not a full major, but it is much more than a rrunor," Pusateri said. Organizational skills are those abilities needed to advan_ce _through the management ranks of business orgamzat10ns, he said. More t~an 30 students, more than enough to begin the program _m the fall, have expressed an intere&t Pusateri said, addmg: ' "Its a new system of guided electives. We use the electJves to make the end degree more valuable in the marketplace " The course involves 26 units - about half the credits bet~een the !8 unit_s_ of minor and the 36 units of a 1'.!aJor To gam cert1f1catJon, which will be a part of th !ma! degree, the_student mu&1 compleLC fivPcomponents -:;,1,....u.:..J~ b ss com rulnt mv iv three units of ting and th~ee of microeconom1cs."'a communica- L'Omponent with three writing umts and two units of h, and a compi;'er science component with three un ts of computer programming. :rte other t~o components involve quantitative skills with t~ree umts of college algebra and three of applied stat! tics and a social science component with three units of lnterperso~al behavior and three units chosen from U.S economic hISto~y. public administration· or social psychology. "We dre.,w up a _list of proposed skills needed to survive and groy. m business and sent it out to some leading employers," Pusateri said. "An excellent idea long overdue'" was the response from the Bank of America. ::A strong yes"' said the Burroughs Corp. . ·. · · Greatly enhance their market_abihtv " said Pacific Telephone • • "Excellent effort to repair a weakn , said J Jessop and Sons. ' · · • In recent years, !'lore than 20 percent of all ba~ calaureate degree wmners have been unemplo) ed on graduationo'. have been forced to take a job uutside their area of trammg. The liberal arts major made up most of th?,s facing d:fficulty, Pusateri said For us to continue to 1gnorr. hesc warmng signs would be folly, " he said. . Yet it "'.'ls not enough to encourage students to take courses with better employment opportunities, because (Continued OD B-16, Col. 4) es;,., . . . . A history major - SJ!

Thurber said. "It gna!l:t:~ir :rne7.~e for th em," their belief in the value of education a~~n l en~f' attitude toward the education of their ow~ a. ec " eu But students still head d th amil1es. . e same potentially own

Thurber wa~ one of.six in th~t class to get a job in his area of e~pert(se. He IS an_ assistant professor of English The others, he said, are employed as cab drivers at the Umvers1ty of S_an Diego.

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EVENING TRIBUNE -MAY :2 1980 Toreros' Brave/Ii eyed lor Don post University of San Diego basketball Coach Jim Brovelli is one of the men bemg considered for the vacant head ~oachmg Job at the University of San Francisco accord- mg to reports out of the Bay Area. ' The Job opened up over the weekend when USF Coach ~nd Athlet1~ Drrector Don Belluomini was fired for recruiting rrregularities," according to school President Rev. John LoSchiavo. USF was on NCAA probation during the 197~80 basketball season. - _,.,,.,..~,

0 J~b Skills Are Joining Libe.ral Arts At USD (Continued from B-9) many of those students- took courses they disliked and either failed or dropped out, he said. The answer was to encourage the students to follow their natural interests and give them enhanced employment skills as well. "I believe that graduates of this program might actually be more attractive to business and industry in the long run than the scientist," said Pusateri. "The scientist will always .be good in the laboratory or in research and development, but later promotions to business management involve people skills. Recommendations from the more than 50 industries ~SD su~eyed prp'llpted them to include the interperson- al relations part m the program Pusateri said adding· "The scientist has a better sh~t at the entry 'ievel jobs at present. If we c.'an bring the liberal arts students up to the point of ':

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"I . hear _my name's being mentioned m San Francisco " Brovelli admitted yesterday "along with San Jose's Bill Barry and Seattle's Jack Schalow. Seattle's dropped its program, so I'm not surprised his name is being mentioned Right now, that's all I know." Brovelli said he is not ac- tively pursuing the Dons' job at the present time. But he did admit that lie talked to a few people when the job was open in 1978. Brovelli has roots at USF. He graduated from the school in 1964, and according to one ource, Brovell1 was the

JIM BROVELLI school's second choice to Belluomini at the time "I've ,never heard that," said Brovelli, who h~s served as USD s head coach since 1973. "Right now, nobody's talked to me. I've talked to a lot of people close to the situation, bu~ nobody knows exactly what's happening. It would be nd1culous for me to speculate on what's going to happen now. . "l never put in a formal application for the job the last time it was open. I ~id lalk to some people up there then, bu_t I n~ver talked with the president. I'm sure they'll open th1.~ t~mg up an~ look at quite a few people. Right now, I m Just trymg to do the best job I can do he_re. I'm trying to put a program together at USD and I thmk we're doing all right. " '

Minority Students Call Law Schools Bastions Of White Values 1 ACCUSATION SHOCKS LEGAL LEADERS, EDUCATORS

mous strides in helping minorities in the past 20 years," he said. "The real problem is when the graduates hit the labor market. The working legal world is still filled with preju- dice that has not diminished appreci- ably in 25 years." Burt of the black attorneys group agrees, saying that often students, law schools and many young attor- neys are caught up in what society expects the law to look like. "There are many white attorneys who dislike wearing the company face just as much as minorities," he I said. "But businesses and the public I expect that air of quiet, reserved, I conservative respectability, and if ! we are going to get anywhere, we ~. must reflect that." l Said Weckstein, "A minority client needing legal help looks first for a lawyer who can win his case, re- gardless or his cultural sensitivity. "We still must remember that our first responsibility is to turn out competent lawyers. We don't look at their color or anything else as we aim each student towards that goal." "And that is the problem," said Troy B. Smith, a USD third-year black law student who has served as student body president. "There ARE cultural differences. But the law professors and law school don't even have to think about it. They don't want to·; they don't have to, and nobody is going to make them." Judge Jones, after hearing of the feelings of Smith and other minority law student.s, got up slowly from behind his large desk in court cham- bers and said quietly,- "I never thought about it quite that way. I haven't changed my opinion, but they ' have an interesting point, let me think about that."

grams for our faculty to become more sensitive to minority students either. We encourage it informally, but that is all. "The practice of law is a highly intellectual thing, and by the time students come here, they should have left those cultural and ethnic problems behind in grade school and college. "What we teach is relevant to what lawyers do, and to start chang- ing that for minority students could possibly doom them to failure in the professional world. I don't think we need to apologize for the high intel- lectual standards of law." But after a strong and spirited defense of law schools, he looked out of his office window and said, "I never really quite thought of it in the way the students describe it. Maybe we could do more. I really don't see how we could do it or what it would be, but it is an interesting idea." "Nonsense," snapped one legal authority."It's a cheap cop-out for high failure rates among minori- ties." "Blacks screw people over proper- ty ownership with the same cultural finesse as whites," said another. Ramon Castro, a successful and highly respected San Diego lawyer who could speak no English when he came to the city, does not blame law schools for most minority student problems. 1 "I am not saying that the minority students don't have a problem," he said. "I am saying they should not have a problem. All those problems should have been resolved before they reach law school. The law schools just cannot do that kind of work, whether it be cultural sensitiv- ity or correcting academic short- comings. "The law schools have made e»or-

law he is trying to teach me. "I don't ask that the law be changed. I simply ask that he at least try to understand that I have that two-stage intellectual process to go through to understand what he is saying, and that makes the work harder." "He has hit the problem right on the head," Superior Court Judge Earl B. Gilliam says of Law's point. "The problem of cultural sensitivi- ty once they are in the law school has hardly been touched. "We have had programs to sensi- tize minority students to what they will find when they get to law school, but I don't know of any programs to sensitize the faculty to minority students," says the black judge who long has worked for more minority law students and who has taught law for 12 years. "We don't have any such faculty programs,'' said Richard D. O'Keefe, vice dean· at California Western School of Law. "In fact, to be frank, I have never thought about it in quite that way, and I don't know anyone who has. However, it is an interesting perspective and maybe we should think about it some more. "But first, our duty to the law students is to make them into law- yers, skilled legal technicians who can make a living in the legal world. We could turn out the most cultural- ly sensitive lawyers in the world, but if they were not technically compe- tent, they would not get a job and we would have cheated them." USD Law School Dean Donald T. Weckstein said that just getting stu- dents through the law work "is an extremely difficult job and I am not sure that we can or even should be culturally aware, whatever that is defined as being. "I agree we don't have any pro-

it, you are being molded to wear the company face which is fashioned in white cultural values formed dec- ades ago." But there are successful minority 1 lawyers who disagree. "Neither the law nor the law 1 schools draw cultural distinctions," says Judge Napoleon Jones, a black whose quiet, authoritative manner has made him a respected Municipal Court judge. "Law schools teach the law," he says. "Rape is rape and murder is murder. All cultures agree on that. It is the law school's job to teach its students how to dissect a case and reach a correct conclusion under the law. "That has nothing to do with cul· tural diversity. I really don't think the law schools have to change. And I deny that they can take my cultur- al background away from me or make me into anything I do not wish to be." But that is only part or the truth, according to John L. Law Jr., a first- year black law student at USD. "Consider learning about property law," he says. "White students are culturally accustomed to the idea of property ownership. I don't care if they are dirt poor and never owned a thing, culturally they can accept the idea of property ownership. "I am not. It is a relatively new cultural thing for blacks to have free access to property ownership, and it is still a strange concept to me personally. "When a professor lectures on property ownership, he lectures from the white cultural perspective in which it is natural to own proper- ty. l must first filter what he says through my cultural background, translate that to his background, and then $tart to try and understand the

(EDITOR'S NOTE: The following story, published yesterday in The San Diego Union, is being reprinted because a key portion was omitted in most editions, the result of a me- chanical error.) By MICHAEL SCO'IT-BLAIR Stoff Writer,The Ian Dim Unicn • When · I enter the Jaw school classroom, I leave my Chicano heri tage outside the door and pick it up on the way out. Inside, I become white - I must if I want to survive" - Lillia Garcia, second-year Jaw student at the University of San Diego. "The walls of the Jaw schools have still not been breached in the fight against institutionalized racism, and nobody has the power to breach them because the Jaw is the ultimat~ power" -=:- a San Diego Jaw pro/es sor. The student and the professor share a rarely expressed criticism that while the legal profession is pushing all other elements of society to respond sensitively to America's cultural diversity, law schools re- main islands or middle- and upper- middle,class white cultural values. Legal and law school leaders are shocked at the accusation. They point with pride to almost 20 years of effort in getting minorities into law schools and special pro- grams to help them succeed. There are about 80 minority stu- dents among the 1,400 at San Diego's two Ameri<;an Bar Association-ac- credited law schools - USD and 1 California Western School of Law. Between them, the two schools have one black and two Asian Jaw profes- sors.

THE SAN DIEGO UNION

© Monday, May 5, 1980

Elliott Guttmann, a Chicano third- year student at Cal Western, ac- knowledges that law schools bend over backwards to admit minorities and give them financial and aca- demic help, but complains, "I don't care what color you are when you enter law school, by the time you come·out, you will have an upper- middle-class white mind. You will fit the mold or you won't make it through law school." Vincent Ruiz is studying hard at Cal Western. His parents came from the fields, but filled him with an awareness of education's value and a pride in his Chicano background. "But once you are in law school, you will pay any price just to get through and out the other end. You'll pay any price - cultural anonymity or adjustment- anything," he says. Keith Burt, a black attorney with the district attorney's office and vice president of the local Association or Black Attorneys, says that with law school's "venomous competition" and its "almost absolute control in a near-arbitrary fashion ... there is barely time to think alfout cultural awareness. Almost without knowing